We used a variety of 3D Benchmarks as well as games. All the tests were done under Windows VISTA 32bit SP1.

First, let's see how the ATI HD3300 performs in the 3DMark software. The Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H promises to offer 2800+ points at the specific benchmark. Well, this could be true only if you use the resolution of 1024x768...

In the the native resolution of 1280x1024, the ATI HD3300 scored 2203 points. Passing to the more demanding 3DMark Vantage ,we got 3062 points at 1024x768, while the 1280x1024 test failed to complete, since the frames/second were almost down to zero. That's an indication that the IGP limits gaming at 1024x768.

Let's now pass to real life games and the question that you have probably in your mind...will this play Crysis or not? The answer is YES but under specific visual quality modes, as the following table shows.

We used the Crysis Benchmark Tool and set a variety of resolutions and image quality options. The Crysis game title should be very playable in case you are using 800x600xLow settings. The average performance was around 48FPS. Increasing the resolution has an affect on the overall performance. At 1024x768xLow the FPS dropped to 35FPS, while at 1280x1024xLow we got the low score of 24FPS (average). Increasing visual quality also resulted to a drop of 27FPS after moving from 800x600xLow to 800x600xMedium..

Passing to the latest Crysis WarHead game title we have more test results that should confirm the above findings. The 800x600 resolution under the "Performance mode" is much playable. After that point, the FPS drop as the resolution/rendering level increase.

In the DirectX10 mode we see an even lower performance.

Other less demanding DX9 games like Company Of Heroes are playable at 1024x768 with 36FPS after using the following visual settings:

The HL2 Episode 2 can also be played at 1024x768 as soon as you make some changes in the visual quality:

Summing up the above results, we can say that the ATI HD3300 can be used for games - even for 3D Person shooter games - provided that you will set the visual improvements low and adjust the game to a proper screen resolution ...Again I was surprised to see that an IGP can play Crysis even at 800x600 :-)

We still haven't forgotten the overclocking tests. With the AMD Overdrive we were able to push GPU core at 847MHz and the memory at 850MHz!

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Without making any voltage adjustments, the system was stable enough to perform a nine (9) round at Crysis. Let's see whether the increased core and memory clocks had an actual affect in the performance:

It seems that overclocking will help you get higher frame/second at Crysis. While it's not a big difference, you will gain up to 8FPS at 800x600xLow and 6FPS at 1024x768xLow. When the rendering quality improves, the gain is as low as 2~3 FPS.